Download Transnational Processes and Social Activism: An Introduction

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Transnational Processes and Social
Activism: An Introduction
DONATELLA DELLA PORTA AND SIDNEY TARROW
Modern social movements developed with the creation of the nationstate, and the nation-state has for many years been the main target for
protest. Although social movements have often pushed for a conception
of ‘‘direct’’ democracy, the institutions and actors of representative
democracy have long structured movements’ political opportunities and
constraints within the boundaries of institutional politics. In fact, for most
of the history of the modern national state, political parties were the main
actors in democratic representation, linking the formation of collective
identities with representative institutions. But at the turn of the millennium, nation-states face a host of new challenges:
• From without, there is the contemporary challenge of terrorism and
the rejection of pluralistic and secular government on the part of
broad sectors of the world’s population;
• from within, there is both widespread disaffection from conventional
forms of politics and disillusionment with the active state;
• linking these internal and external challenges are the uncertainties of
new forms of internationalization and globalization that connect citizens to a global market but reduce their control over their own fates.
Although the power of the nation-state has by no means disappeared,
since the 1960s, social, cultural, and geopolitical changes have begun to
transform social movements’ institutional and cultural environments. In
particular, there has been a shift in the locus of political power—a shift
symbolized by the growing use of concepts like ‘‘multilevel governance,’’
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‘‘the world polity,’’ and ‘‘global civil society,’’ which point to the following internal and external developments. Internally, there has been a continuing shift in power from parliaments to the executive, and, within the
executive, to the bureaucracy and to quasi-independent agencies. Power
has moved from mass-parties to parties that have been variously defined
as ‘‘catchall,’’ ‘‘professional-electoral,’’ or ‘‘cartel’’ parties (for a review,
see della Porta, 2001), and therefore from party activists to the ‘‘new party
professionals.’’ Externally, there has been a shift in the locus of institutional power from the national to both the supranational and the regional
levels, with the increasing power of international institutions, especially
economic ones (World Bank, International Monetary Fund [IMF], World
Trade Organization [WTO]), and some regional ones (in Europe, the
European Union [EU]; in the Western hemisphere, the North American
Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]).
Meanwhile, informal networks have spread across borders (such as
international agreements on standards; nongovernmental organization
[NGO] coalitions in the areas of human rights, the environment, and
peace; and, in a darker vein, drug and human trafficking networks).
Many see a shift in the axis of power from politics to the market, with
neoliberal economic policies increasing the power of multinational corporations and reducing the capacity of traditional state structures to control
them. Taken together, these changes have led to the development of a system of ‘‘complex internationalism,’’ which provides both threats and
opportunities to ordinary people, to organized nonstate actors, and to
weaker states, as we shall argue in our conclusions.
How are social movements reacting to these power shifts in terms of
their organizational structures, their collective action frames and identities, and their repertoires of action? At first, scholars assumed that international movements would be similar to those that had developed within
the nation-state. More recently, a growing stream of research on social
movements has identified three important processes of transnationalization: diffusion, domestication, and externalization. By diffusion, we mean
the spread of movement ideas, practices, and frames from one country to
another; by domestication, we mean the playing out on domestic territory
of conflicts that have their origin externally; and by externalization, we
mean the challenge to supranational institutions to intervene in domestic
problems or conflicts.
These processes are all important and appear to be widespread. However, the recent evolution of movements focusing on ‘‘global justice,’’
peace and war, or both, suggests some additional processes. The most
important of these, and the one that emerges most clearly from the chapters in this book, is what we call ‘‘transnational collective action’’—that is,
coordinated international campaigns on the part of networks of activists against
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international actors, other states, or international institutions. In the first section of this introduction, we will rapidly survey findings on the three better-known processes of diffusion, domestication, and externalization. In
the second section, we will try to specify how the process of transnational
collective action has developed in recent years. In the third section, we
will suggest some hypotheses about its forms and dynamics. In the fourth
section, we will summarize the contributions to the volume.
DIFFUSION, DOMESTICATION,
AND EXTERNALIZATION
Three broad processes link transnational politics today to the traditions
of social movement studies in the past and lay the groundwork for the
major changes that we see occurring in the contemporary world.
Diffusion
Diffusion is the most familiar and the oldest form of transnational contention. It need not involve connections across borders, but only that challengers in one country or region adopt or adapt the organizational forms,
collective action frames, or targets of those in other countries or regions.
Thus, the ‘‘shantytown’’ protests that were used to demand American
universities’ divestiture from South Africa were a domestic example of
diffusion (Soule, 1999), while the spread of the ‘‘sit-in’’ from the American civil rights movement to Western Europe was a transnational one
(Tarrow, 1989). Research on protest in Belgium, France, and Germany has
also indicated the existence of important cross-national diffusion effects
(Reising, 1999:333).
A variant on diffusion is what Tarrow and McAdam, in chapter 6, call
‘‘brokerage,’’ through which groups or individuals deliberately connect
actors from different sites of contention. This process was evident as early
as the spread of the antislavery movement from England to the European
continent in the late eighteenth century (Drescher, 1987) and, in more
recent history, in the transfer of the American student movement’s
themes and practices to West Germany, through students who had studied in the United States in the 1960s (McAdam and Rucht, 1993). In their
contribution, Tarrow and McAdam identify the brokerage elements that
built the Zapatista solidarity network around the world after the Chiapas
rebellion of 1994.
One of the factors that characterizes the new international system is the
greater ease with which particular practices or frames can be transferred
from one country to another through cheap international travel, the
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knowledge of common languages, and access to the Internet (Bennett,
2003, and chapter 9 in this volume). But underlying these advantages lies
a disadvantage. Every new form of communication both heightens ties
between those who already know one another, and raises the walls of
exclusion for those lacking access to the new medium of communication
(Tilly, 2004). Not only that: although it is undoubtedly easier and faster
for information about protest to be communicated across national lines
today than it was fifty years ago, the Internet also creates the risk of diffuseness, as those with Internet skills learn to mount their own websites
and set themselves up as movement entrepreneurs. In general, research
indicates that sustained diffusion processes both require and help to produce transnational networks and identities, to which we will turn in the
next section.
Internalization
By internalization, we mean the playing out on domestic territory of conflicts that have their origin externally. Previous research on protest events,
collected mainly from newspaper sources from Western Europe, stressed
the small number of protests that target international institutions directly.
A good part of this research focused on the EU. Using Reuters World
News Service and the Reuters Textline, Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow
(2001; also see 1999) found a limited (but growing) number of such protests. Similarly, in Germany, Dieter Rucht (2002a) observed a low (and
declining) proportion of protests aimed at the international level (with the
high point coming in 1960–1964) or at EU institutions. Meanwhile, Marco
Giugni and Florence Passy (2002) noted how rarely protests on migrant
rights targeted the EU, notwithstanding the increasing Europeanization
of legal competences regarding border control. Even environmental
action was rarely turned on Brussels: protests with EU targets ranged
from 0.8 percent in Italy to 4.6 percent in Germany in the last decade,
with no discernible increasing trend (Rootes, 2002). Similarly, few protest
events have addressed international organizations other than the EU.
Protest events analysis, however, indicated that protest often addressed
national governments regarding decisions that originated or were implemented at a supranational level. In their analysis of protest in Europe,
Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow (2001) found that most EU related events
(406 out of 490) were in fact cases of domestication—that is, conflict about
EU decisions, but mounted at the national level. And processes of domestication in fact characterized many mobilizations of European farmers
(Bush and Simi, 2001). Outside of Europe, as well, many important mobilizations against international institutions followed a similar dynamic.
The anti-IMF ‘‘austerity protests’’ of the 1980s took a largely domesti-
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cated form (Walton, 2001). Recent Argentine protests were similarly triggered by the pressure of international financial institutions but directed
against domestic institutions (Auyero, 2003).
The low level of protest targeting the supranational level might be
explained by the political opportunities available to collective actors at
other territorial levels of government. In addition, the undeniable ‘‘democratic deficit’’ of international institutions—lacking both electoral responsiveness and accountability in the public sphere (Eder, 2000)—plays an
important role. Such mobilizations might in fact be seen as proof of the
continued dominance of the nation-state. However, a more careful look
shows the emergence, in the course of these campaigns, of innovations
both in the organizational structure and in the frames of the protest (della
Porta, 2003a), as we will see below.
Externalization
A third area in which researchers have observed the emergence of clear
transnational trends is in studies focusing on movement organizations
that become active supranationally. Within this approach, scholars of
international relations have analyzed informational and lobbying campaigns in which national and international NGOs attempt to stimulate
international alliances with nationally weak social movements (Keck and
Sikkink, 1998; see also chapter 7 in this volume). These researchers stress
that organized interests and social movements look to international institutions for the mobilization of resources that can be used at the national
level. A variant is the construction of transnational coalitions of international NGOs, which reach into these institutions to find allies on behalf
of the claims of weak domestic actors in countries of the South (Fox and
Brown, 1998).
The strategy of externalization (Chabanet, 2002) has often characterized
the mobilization of national groups targeting the EU in attempts to put
pressure on their own governments for material or symbolic resources.
For instance, British environmental organizations paid increasing attention to the EU (even playing a leading role vis-à-vis other environmental
groups) when political opportunities at home were poor (Rootes, 2002;
see also Rootes in this volume). To give another example, with their Eurostrike in 1997, Spanish, French, and Belgian Renault workers protested at
the EU level against the closing of the Renault factory of Vilvorde in Belgium (Lefébure and Lagneau, 2002).
Some international institutions have indeed emerged as arenas for the
articulation of collective claims (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco, 1997).
On the rights of indigenous populations or women, the United Nations
seems able to produce international norms that, though weaker than
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national regulation, can be used to strengthen and legitimize these
groups’ claims (see Soysal, 1994). In Western Europe, the European Parliament has worked as a main channel of access for various organizations,
especially in areas like the environment, in which parliamentary committees are active. Feminists, environmentalists, and unions have also been
able to obtain favorable decisions from the European Court of Justice,
especially with the increasing competence of the EU with respect to environmental and social policies (Dehousse, 1998; Balme and Chabanet,
2002).
In their dealings with international institutions, some movement organizations receive material and symbolic resources, such as the financing
of particular projects, or recognition of their legitimacy. On their side,
international institutions benefit from low-cost work from voluntary associations; from the information they can provide; from access to local populations; and, of course, from legitimization (for instance, Mazey and
Richardson, 1997:10). For the institutionally weak European Parliament,
alliances with NGOs provide resources for legitimization vis-à-vis the
more powerful European Commission and the European Council. Similarly for the United Nations, NGOs active on human rights help a weak
bureaucracy to acquire specialized, and, in general, reliable knowledge,
while development NGOs offer high-quality, low-cost human resources
(for a summary, see della Porta and Kriesi, 1999).
Externalization processes have, however, some limits. First of all, ‘‘boomerangs’’ and ‘‘insider/outsider coalitions’’ are more likely to emerge
when ‘‘(1) channels between domestic groups and their governments are
blocked or hampered or where such channels are ineffective for resolving
a conflict, setting into motion a ‘boomerang’ pattern . . . (2) advocates
believe that networking will further their missions and campaigns, and
actively promote networks; and (3) conferences and other forms of international contact create arenas for forming and strengthening networks’’
(Keck and Sikkink, 1998:12). Moreover, they are potentially more effective
for movements focusing on internationally established norms (such as
human rights) than for those struggling against internationally hegemonic discourse (such as the liberalization of markets for goods and services).
To summarize: these three forms of transnational relations represent an
important part of what some scholars have been calling ‘‘global social
movements’’ and what others, more modestly, call ‘‘transnational politics.’’ They are extremely important, and may be increasing in scope and
scale, but they do not represent the most dramatic change we see in the
world of contentious politics. This is what we call ‘‘transnational collective action,’’ to which we turn in the following section.
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TRANSNATIONAL COLLECTIVE ACTION
Transnational collective action is the term we use to indicate coordinated
international campaigns on the part of networks of activists against international actors, other states, or international institutions. Both in Western
Europe, where it takes a more institutionalized form, and outside Europe,
where more vigorous forms have developed in recent years, we see it
developing out of the more traditional forms that we have outlined above.
We can vividly illustrate this development of new forms from old with
the example of anthropologist Hilary Cunningham, who has studied
activism on the U.S./Mexican border for over ten years. She began in the
early 1990s by studying the ‘‘border crossing’’ of a group of activists
linked to the U.S. Sanctuary movement, who offered safe havens to Central American refugees. She compares this experience to more recent
activism to reduce the negative effects of the NAFTA agreement
(2001:372–79). Between these two episodes, both occurring on the same
border and involving the same populations, Cunningham observed a shift
from a state-centric movement to a transnational coalition (379–83). In
fact, as the movement developed, the role of the state was transformed
for its activists. This transformation developed out of environmental, cognitive, and relational changes. We can use these categories to examine the
forces behind the development of transnational collective action.
Environmental Change
Since the late 1980s, three kinds of changes in the international environment have helped to produce a transnationalization of collective action.
First, the collapse of the Soviet bloc encouraged the development of forms
of nonstate action that had previously been blocked by Cold War divisions. This produced a wave of Western governmental support for NGO
activity in both East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union (Mendelson and Glenn, 2002), as well as the development of homegrown nonstate groups that might otherwise have been branded as ‘‘procommunist’’ in the days of the Cold War. At the same time, the explosion
of secessionist movements, border wars, and warlordism that followed
the breakup of the Soviet bloc fed an increase of humanitarian aid movements around the world.
Second, the development of electronic communications and the spread
of inexpensive international travel have made it easier for formerly isolated movement actors to communicate and collaborate with one another
across borders. Related to this, there has been a massive increase in migration flows across borders, which has stimulated both benign forms of
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immigrant activism (Guarnizo, Portes, and Landolt, 2003) and the more
transgressive forms of diasporic nationalism that have exacerbated ethnic
and linguistic conflicts (Anderson, 1998).
Finally, the importance of the international environment has been highlighted by the growing power of transnational corporations and international institutions, treaties regulating the international economy, and
international events like the global summits of the World Bank, the Group
of Eight, and especially the World Trade Organization. These are of
course framed by activists as threats, which they indeed are for broad sectors of the world’s population; but it is the internationalization of the
global environment that produces opportunities for activists from both
North and South to engage in concerted collective action. Together, these
changes combine into what we call ‘‘complex internationalism,’’ and will
describe at greater length in our conclusions.
While some analysts appear to think that globalization is sufficient to
produce global social movements, changes in the global environment are
not sufficient to produce a transnationalization of collective action. Cognitive change within and relational changes between actors must be the
active forces for such a fundamental change. The former can best be seen
in the changing perspective of nonstate actors active on the international
scene, while the latter can be observed in the formation of sustained networks of transnational activists.
Cognitive Change
Since social movements are ‘‘reflective’’ actors, their international experiences have been critically analyzed. Tactics and frames that appear to succeed in more than one venue have been institutionalized—for example, in
the spread of the practice of demonstrating on the occasion of the periodic
meetings of the great international institutions, first within Western
Europe in the 1990s and then globally, against the World Bank, the IMF,
and the WTO. The formation of the ‘‘World Social Forum,’’ created to
highlight the distortions of the annual Davos World Economic Forum,
eventually produced regional social fora such as the European one that
took place in Florence in 2002. Moreover, the tactical adaptation of governmental and police strategies to movement challenges at a transnational
level demanded the common elaboration of plans for collective action on
the part of activists.
With respect to domestication, although still mainly addressing
national governments, many groups of protesters have learned from people like themselves in other countries. This was the case, for instance, for
Italian farmers, during the struggle against the implementation of EU
quotas on milk production (della Porta, 2003a). Similarly, the local move-
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ments of the unemployed have learned to pay greater attention to their
transnational connections (Chabanet, 2002; Baglioni, 2003). Though it was
‘‘domestic,’’ the wave of attacks on McDonald’s in France gave rise to a
spontaneous wave of similar attacks in other countries and to the popularity of the theme of the ‘‘Americanization’’ of mass culture and commerce.
As for externalization, the ‘‘vertical’’ experience of individual national
movements operating internationally has placed many actors in contact
with others like themselves and thus encouraged them to develop a more
globalized framing of their messages and their domestic appeals. We can
see this in the indigenous peoples’ movements throughout Latin
America, which have adopted many of the same cognitive frames in countries with little else in common (Yashar, 2005).
Relational Changes
The most striking developments of the last decade have operated through
the relational mechanisms that are bringing together national actors in
transnational coalitions. The existence of international institutions as
common ‘‘vertical’’ targets has helped to produce the ‘‘horizontal’’ formation of transnational coalitions through the networks of activists that form
around them. For example, at the European level, networks of organizations of regionalist movements (Hooghe, 2002), women’s organizations
(Mazey, 2002), and labor unions (Martin and Ross, 2001) gained some success in the EU. In the same way, indigenous people and human rights
organizations have coordinated their efforts and gained access to the
United Nations (for a summary, see della Porta and Kriesi, 1999). In parallel, although more slowly, women’s concerns and ecological issues
advanced in the United Nations, as well as in the World Bank. National
women’s organizations that participated in the UN NGO conferences for
women, especially in Beijing in 1995, encountered others like themselves
and forged long-lasting transnational coalitions. The same is true of the
‘‘counter-summits’’ organized around the economic summits at Davos
and elsewhere. According to a survey of NGOs, a major perceived advantage of the counter-summit is the consolidation of transnational and
trans-thematic linkages between transnational movement organizations
(Pianta, 2001).
Relations between movements and governments are a major source of
change. Social movements do not act in a vacuum, and, in fact, the strongest influences on their behavior and tactics are the behavior and tactics of
the governments they challenge. The last decade has shown that governments also imitate one another, therefore leading to increasing similarities
in the contexts in which movement campaigns and protests take place.
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Increasing interaction facilitates the growth of common identity, and
therefore reduces national particularism. One of the major changes in the
last half decade has been the adoption of new and more violent tactics on
the part of the forces of order against international protesters. This came
to a head in Genoa in 2001, but it has been evident since the 1999 protests
in Seattle that police forces are following similar strategies in protecting
international institutions and conferences.
In summary, reflecting on the successes, but also on the failures of
transnational collective action, as well as the experience of working
together on temporary campaigns, has led to the creation of transnational
organizational structures and the framing of transnational identities. Certainly, social movements have retained their national character, remaining tied to the types of political opportunities present in individual states;
but they have also increasingly interacted transnationally. As has been
noted, if social movements are to work with success in supranational arenas, they must develop a base of cross-national resources and global strategies that will be significantly different from those deployed in national
arenas (Smith, Pagnucco, and Romeril, 1994:126). These arenas offer activists of different world regions the opportunity to meet, form organizational networks, coordinate activity, and construct global frames and
programs (Passy, 1999; Smith, 1999).
EMERGING FORMS AND DYNAMICS OF
TRANSNATIONAL CONTENTION
All four forms of transnationalization described above facilitate the
spread of movements targeting international institutions, practices, and
relationships, producing a growing concern with global issues. In the last
few years, research has begun to develop on the ways in which transnational collective action is organized and on how transnational conflict and
alliance structures are formed. Knowledge has increased, for example,
regarding the lobbying efforts of international NGOs or networks of
NGOs, working patiently within the ambit of international institutions
(O’Brien et al., 2000); on the construction of international treaties and
agreements with the active participation of transnational actors (Klotz,
1996; Price, 1997; 1998); on the service or information-based politics of foreign NGOs or networks within individual societies that are not their own
(Keck and Sikkink, 1998); on the framing of domestic protest activities
against ‘‘globalization’’ without significant foreign participation (such as
the 1995 Chiapas rebellion against the Mexican government, framed
against the handy symbol of NAFTA [Olesen 2003]); on the actions of
local movement actors active on global issues, such as local social fora
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(Andretta et al., 2002 and 2003); and on transnationally organized contentious claims-making against international economic actors, institutions,
and states (Andretta et al.; also della Porta, 2003b).
Building on this knowledge, but adding new elements of research, the
chapters collected in this volume pose one or more of the following questions:
• What are the organizational forms that have developed to connect
very loose networks of activists (‘‘movements of movements,’’ as they
have been called)? What is the role of the Internet (‘‘the net of the
networks’’)?
• How do repertoires of protest adapt to address institutions with low
democratic accountability and transparency? To what extent are
movements able to build new public spheres, or arenas, for critical
political debates?
• Are movement identities undergoing changes in their content and
structure as the result of transnational exposure and activism? Is
there a return to ‘‘materialistic’’ concerns? Is tolerance for internal
differences growing? Is the opposition to neoliberal globalization an
emerging master-frame?
• What are the main resources (knowledge, capacity for disruption,
legitimacy, links to institutional actors, etc.) that movements mobilize
in order to address the political claims in a complex system of governance? Where do social movements find their ‘‘social capital’’?
• How do national (or even local) political opportunities influence the
strategies of social movements that are active on global issues? Are
the political parties of the Left still perceived as potential allies? And
what are the differences between movements’ adaptation to multilevel governance at the center and at the periphery?
Looking at the effects of the development of conflicts over global issues
at the domestic level, as well as at the transnational dynamics of contention, the contributions to this volume begin to provide responses to these
questions.
With respect to organizational structure, they clearly indicate that
recent forms of transnational contention are far from exclusively organized around transnational social movement organizations. Instead, they
are rooted at the local and national level, turning simultaneously to various governmental levels. In particular, transnational mobilizations create
linkages between different social and political actors: not only do domestic and international populations of movement organizations interact (see
Johnson and McCarthy in this volume), but coalitions involving local
groups are formed through local social fora and changes in the framing
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of domestic political conflicts. New technologies reduce the costs of participating in transnational networks, even for small local groups, helping
in the development of global protest campaigns.
Also at the local level, ‘‘global social justice’’ has become a masterframe of new mobilizations, including those addressing the environment
and the conditions and rights of women and workers, native people, peasants, and children (see Diani in this volume). This in turn produces
loosely coupled transnational networks that organize around particular
campaigns or series of campaigns, using a variety of forms of protests,
adopting and adapting repertoires of protest from the traditions of different movements. Specific concerns with women’s rights, labor issues, the
defense of the environment, and opposition to war survive, but are
bridged together in the opposition against ‘‘neoliberal globalization.’’ In
order to keep different groups together, ‘‘tolerant’’ inclusive identities
develop, stressing differences as a positive quality of the movement.
As for the repertoire of action, after years of using more moderate tactics, a new propensity for ‘‘taking people to the street’’ has developed, in
particular, with the development of forms of civil disobedience. Yet, protest is also combined with educational campaigns, comic presentations,
and attention to the mass media, stressing not only the power in numbers
but also the importance of the presentation and diffusion of the message
(on the importance of media work for ATTAC, see Felix Kolb’s contribution to this volume). Whether a qualitatively new repertoire of contention
has developed around transnational contention remains to be seen, but
what is clear is that new targets, new frames, and new combinations of
constituencies have produced major innovations in the existing repertoire.
As we will see in this volume, this evolution modifies trends that have
been observed in contentious politics at the domestic level in many countries:
• If social movement organizations appeared increasingly institutionalized and bureaucratic during the 1980s and 1990s, new types of
loose organizational structures have emerged around the issue of
global justice, with a capacity to penetrate the public sphere, bringing
new issues into the public sphere;
• if movement strategies appeared increasingly moderate and contained, direct action and civil disobedience have combined with
them, increasing the disruptiveness of protest;
• if social movement discourses appeared to privilege specialization,
they have recently shown a taste for more general issues.
What do social movement scholars have to teach in response to these
changes? Explanations for these new developments can be found in the
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resources and opportunities available to movements—as the social movement literature suggests. But these changes can only be captured if we
shift from a static to a more dynamic definition of resources and opportunities: for example, from resources and opportunities as ‘‘they are,’’ to
resources and opportunities as they are perceived and constructed by the
activists; from specific collective action frames to the process of framing
entire episodes, the actors, and the issues within them; and from studying
individual forms of collective action to the process of innovation and
interaction between challengers and their opponents (della Porta,
1995:9–14; della Porta and Diani, 1999:223–24; McAdam, Tarrow, and
Tilly, 2001: ch. 2).
In terms of the mobilization of resources, two emerging challenges for
movements can be mentioned. First, the fragmentation in the social structure has increased social heterogeneity, in particular with a decline of the
social groups (the working class, but also the ‘‘new middle class’’) that
had provided the social bases for many previous movements. Second, an
increasingly individualized culture has been read as reducing the bases
for solidarity values in the society, therefore increasing a tendency to freeriderism and diminishing the propensity for collective action.
However, our findings suggest that transnational mobilization is facilitated by the adaptation of movement strategies to the changing environment (including a shift in the type of resources available to challengers).
In particular, the flexible networks that have been encouraged by a looser
and less crystallized social structure make it possible to connect heterogeneous social bases with movement organizations inherited from previous
waves of protest. At the same time, a redefinition of political involvement
that emphasizes diversity and subjectivity (see chapter 8 in this volume)
taps into cultural changes—which some have called ‘‘postmodern’’—that
build on the thesis that ‘‘the personal is political.’’ In this way, ‘‘apolitical’’ personal lifestyle changes that are becoming common to many young
people across the globe have become an intangible but rich source of
movement mobilization.
Similarly, if we look at political opportunities, both the supranational
and the national levels appear to be quite closed in traditional terms. On
the one hand, even the most developed among the international institutions lack the basic features of democratic responsiveness and accountability—granting at best informal and limited access to movement
organizations or, more generally, to citizens. On the other hand, the traditional allies of social movements, the left-wing parties, have been far from
supportive of recent protests, both in their content and forms. But here
again, recent mobilizations have attempted to redefine the concept of politics, putting an emphasis on the role of ‘‘politics from below,’’ and
expressing a strong distrust of representative institutions. Addressing
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public opinion directly, the activists seem to attempt (with some success)
to create public spaces that are autonomous from the political parties, but
also from the commercial logic of the mass media. That is, faced with few
institutional opportunities, the activists aim at redefining politics.
THIS VOLUME
The chapters collected in this volume address these theoretical issues on
the basis of empirical studies of contemporary social movements and
their interactions with opponents, authorities, and international institutions. Global protest campaigns, counter-summits, cross-sectoral alliances
among movements and NGOs, the refraction of transnational protest
activity into the domestic arena: these are some promising research subjects that can help to better specify and operationalize the dynamics
sketched above.
This volume builds on a rich tradition of scholarly collaboration that
goes back over fifteen years to a meeting of social movement scholars at
the Free University of Amsterdam in 1986. At that time, distinct research
traditions divided social movement scholarship among Europeans and
Americans, sociologists and political scientists, advocates of ‘‘new social
movement theory’’ and of resource mobilization (Klandermans and Tarrow, 1988). The Amsterdam meeting set out to bridge those gaps. It not
only succeeded in producing a much-read volume (Klandermans et al.,
1988), but it gave rise to an international book series, International Social
Movement Research, and created a loosely linked international network of
social movement scholars who met every few years, renewed and broadened their composition, and helped set the agenda for social movement
research for years to come (Klandermans et al., 1988; McAdam et al., 1996;
della Porta, Kriesi, and Rucht, 1999; Diani and McAdam, 2003). This volume is dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague, Alberto Melucci, who was part of the first ‘‘Amsterdam’’ generation, and whose work
has influenced many of us.
While some research focused in the past on transnational campaigns
and, more recently, on the rise of a global justice movement, this volume
aims at linking local and global conflicts by looking at the way in which
global issues are transforming local and national movements, as well as
at the interaction between local, national, and supranational movement
organizations. Using recent cases of transnational contention—from the
European Social Forum in Florence to the Argentinean human rights
movement and British environmentalists, from movement networks in
Bristol and Glasgow to the Zapatistas—the chapters presented in the volume adapt the concepts and hypotheses developed in the social move-
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Transnational Processes and Social Activism
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ment literature to what appears to be a new cycle of protest developing
around the globe, after the ‘‘low ebb’’ of mobilization in the last decade.
Part I of the book contains two chapters devoted to the analysis of the
effects of the emergence of a ‘‘global vision’’ of conflict at the local and
national level. We will show how global justice issues affect local and
national movement organizations, first by helping to structure local
movement networks and then by widening the issue scope of national
organizations. Next, we analyze how activists in transnational protest
campaigns engage in collective action at the local level, developing a multilevel challenge to traditional politics. Finally, we show how transnational movement organizations adapt to national opportunities, helping
to diffuse concern over global injustice at home.
In particular, in chapter 2, Christopher Rootes discusses the degree and
forms of transnationalization in the environmental movement. Using rich
databases on the British case, the chapter assesses a limited transnationalization in terms of protest action as well as organizational structures. Indepth analysis of some movement organizations points, however, to the
changing character of the British environmental movement as it wrestles
with the challenges presented by its need to act locally while at the same
time increasingly recognizing the growing importance of transnational
economic and political institutions.
In chapter 3, Mario Diani addresses the general question of whether
and to what extent transnational issues, such as North–South inequalities,
third world debt, or globalization processes, affect local politics and the
structure of local civil society in West European countries. On the basis of
evidence coming from structured interviews conducted with 124 organizations in Glasgow and 134 organizations in Bristol, the author stresses
the influence of global issues on the network structure of the groups, suggesting that interest in transnational issues does indeed shape the structure of civil society networks.
In part II, we turn to the processes through which domestic contention
diffuses to other countries and to the international level. In chapter 4, Erik
Johnson and John McCarthy look at the interactions between national and
transnational social movement organizations. Comparing the coevolution
of the populations of transnational environmental movement organizations with the national populations of environmental movement organizations in the United States (based on various issues of the Yearbook of
International Organizations, and the Encyclopedia of Associations, National
Organizations of the U.S.), with particular attention to the timing of the
founding of movement organizations, the chapter discusses the ‘‘topdown’’ versus ‘‘bottom-up’’ hypotheses, stressing the role of state-level
movement organizations in stimulating the rise of transnational ones.
In chapter 5, Felix Kolb focuses on the role of social movement organi-
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Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow
zations in shaping the European debate on global issues. On the basis of
research on the successful anti-neoliberal group, ATTAC (combining a
content analysis of newspaper coverage with archival sources), the chapter shows how transnational protest, mass media, and organizational
strategy interacted in the making of the German branch of this important
transnational movement organization.
In chapter 6, Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam address the mechanisms and processes through which transnational contention is organized, and in particular on ‘‘scale shift,’’ which signifies a shifting
trajectory of contention from small to larger arenas (or, in contrast, from
larger to smaller ones). The authors specify this process through four
main mechanisms and two alternative paths (‘‘brokerage’’ and ‘‘diffusion’’) and speculate about the properties and implications of each for the
durability of trajectories of mobilization. Each of these paths is illustrated
with well-known cases of scale shift, ranging from the American civil
rights movement to the Zapatista network and the nuclear freeze movement.
Part III turns to various patterns of the internationalization of contentious politics. In chapter 7, Kathryn Sikkink addresses the question of
how the interaction of national and international political opportunity
structures influences the strategies of social movements that are active on
global issues. On the basis of a series of case studies, especially in Latin
America, the chapter discusses how activists, aware of the possibilities
created by this dynamic interaction, choose strategies attuned to opportunities at both the international and domestic levels. Using the basic idea
of closed and open structures at the domestic and international level as
an analytical starting point, it suggests four different characteristic patterns of activism, linking them with different policy issues (such as
human rights, trade, and money).
Donatella della Porta, in chapter 8, discusses the conception of democracy and politics in the movement for ‘‘globalization from below.’’ Using
data from a survey with 2,800 activists of different nationalities who took
part in the European Social Forum in Florence, and focus groups of activists in Florence, it discusses the movement’s responses to challenges
related to various aspects of transnationalization, looking at some characteristics of ‘‘global activists,’’ such as their involvement in complex political and social networks and their range of previous experiences of
political participation. Finally, the chapter addresses the activists’ definition of politics, looking both at their criticisms of representative democracy and their image of a democracy ‘‘in movement.’’
Lance Bennett, in chapter 9, contrasts ‘‘traditional’’ and ‘‘new’’ patterns
of transnational activism. Looking at the movement organized loosely
around ‘‘global justice’’ issues, the author suggests that it challenges ear-
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lier accounts of transnational activism cast largely in terms of NGO-centered, single-issue policy networks that run centrally organized
campaigns based on brokered coalitions, aimed mainly at policy reforms.
The new transnational movement is instead described as composed of
loose activist networks adopting self-organizing communication technologies and advocating multiple issues, multiple goals, and inclusive identities. The implications of the emerging organizational model for political
effectiveness and democracy-building are discussed.
The conclusion addresses three main issues. First, we look at how the
international environment intersects with globalization to produce a system that we call ‘‘complex internationalism,’’ in which states, international institutions, and nonstate actors regularly interact around issues of
global importance. Second, we turn to the progress that has been made in
scholars’ understanding of transnational contention since the first studies
of the phenomenon appeared in the 1990s. Finally, we turn to some of the
unresolved and recently opened issues in transnational contention, such
as the rise of militant political Islam and the apparent turn of the United
States to a more hegemonic project that threatens much of the progress in
multilateral governance made over the last few decades.
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